Tiscali/talktalk dispute advice needed

stardust-cowboy

Ive recently recieved a bill fromm talk talk regarding a tiscali account i had in 2007
I was in dispute with them over severe unfair bandwidth throttling
This was something they were unable to resolve with the generic 'help' emails they send
I couldnt get an actual response to my complaint
so i told them i wish to cancell my account
and i moved on
i dont want to pay for a service i wasnt recieving
from their responses its clear to see they werent reading my emails as none of my questions were ever answered

can anyone advise me on where i stand with this and what to do next?
thanks in advance

I_am_not_a_sheep

Well firstly they are now owned by CPW group (carphone w(h)a(o)rehouse). Just so you are aware.

Normally within your contract there would have been a clause regarding "traffic shaping" or "fair usage". However many ISP contacts didn’t state what the fair usage was, and what times of the day and night it applied to etc.

If the fair usage was not stated as a factual number you could rightly state that they did not adhere to their contract, thus making the contract broken.

However, CPW are like bulldogs when it comes to collecting money.

stardust-cowboy

I_am_not_a_sheep wrote: »

Well firstly they are now owned by CPW group (carphone w(h)a(o)rehouse). Just so you are aware.

Normally within your contract there would have been a clause regarding "traffic shaping" or "fair usage". However many ISP contacts didn’t state what the fair usage was, and what times of the day and night it applied to etc.

If the fair usage was not stated as a factual number you could rightly state that they did not adhere to their contract, thus making the contract broken.

However, CPW are like bulldogs when it comes to collecting money.

thank you!
i experienced this throttling when i upgraded from 1meg to their max at the time 8meg. I shall look at the contract as i did it online and have kept all the emails sent and recieved. they did quote their fair usage policy at me but the problem was i could barely open web pages it was so slow and my download speeds were 0
i was unfairly throttled in my opinion and to this day it isnt resolved! and now they want 350 quid!! (which i dont have!)
thankyou for the advice i will look and see if they stated any times of day etc
x

MrsTinks

What evidence do you have that it was throttled? Not meaning to be funny but it's entirely possible it was a line fault or any number of other things...
Unfair usage etc really comes into play if you use extreem amounts of bandwidth, not if the line speed drops to so slow you can't access normal pages... Was your line DS or LLU?

And has the speed problem been resolved now?

stardust-cowboy

MrsTine wrote: »

What evidence do you have that it was throttled? Not meaning to be funny but it's entirely possible it was a line fault or any number of other things...
Unfair usage etc really comes into play if you use extreem amounts of bandwidth, not if the line speed drops to so slow you can't access normal pages... Was your line DS or LLU?

And has the speed problem been resolved now?

Hi
modem was ds and i was using appropriate filters on phone lines
i even replaced them incase it was a problem
i did numerous online speed tests at different times of day
i went through all of their suggested fixes
I had no problems when i was recieving 1meg
as soon as i upgraded it was hardly useable and no settings had changed on my pc
off peak usage was average, acceptable
but at around 5pm weekdays and 2pm weekends till midnight it was useless!!
peace x

oh and no it was never resolved i didnt hear anything else from them and i moved house and changed provider. untill today 3 years later!

MrsTinks

It's likely nothing to do with Tiscali/talktalk or anyone else...
other than the DS network is overloaded. The DS network is owned and controlled by BT Openreach - all the providers are nothing more than resellers. The could have been a fault on the VP, BT could have changed something on the exchange, it could have been a business that connected to the exchange around the same time you upgraded and basically had heavier weighting than you on the lines...
This is why it's clearly stated "up to 8mg" speeds... sorry.
Legally those magic little words are the ISPs get out clause...

stardust-cowboy

MrsTine wrote: »

It's likely nothing to do with Tiscali/talktalk or anyone else...
other than the DS network is overloaded. The DS network is owned and controlled by BT Openreach - all the providers are nothing more than resellers. The could have been a fault on the VP, BT could have changed something on the exchange, it could have been a business that connected to the exchange around the same time you upgraded and basically had heavier weighting than you on the lines...
This is why it's clearly stated "up to 8mg" speeds... sorry.
Legally those magic little words are the ISPs get out clause...

but surley not to the point where im getting 0meg
it hardly seems fair!
and none of that was suggested or explained to me at the time
this could have been resolved
i feel terribly let down by their lack of customer service
i feel robbed
but thank you for your advice

MrsTinks

I'm not saying it's right...
Infact I left an ISP for intermittent connection problems long before my 12 months were up. I'd reported the fault, jumped through the loops etc and recorded it all. They tried to get money out of me for leavign early and I had to point out that they failed to provide me with the service they were contractually obliged to as they were unable to resolve the fault (FWIW it was Orange I think... ) in a timely manner. We're talking 3 months of network dropping. I KNEW it was a line fault (loads of problems on new estate) but they refused to send a BT engineer...
I eventually got it resolved with new ISP after 2 BT engineer visits... been pretty good since. However I had to get very specific with the contract etc...
The speed issue is a different matter because technically you had a line... IYSWIM... even if at times it was so slow as to be unusable.
Now if you have proof of the line speeds and you were still with them and at the address it would be easier... but because they can't run a test retrospectively it becomes tricky... They can't start monitoring the line either because the fault is years ago.
You could try the "failed to provide the contracted service" thing tho... worth a shot I guess

DarkConvict

Also speeds are an upto rating.

It does sound like a line issue, either a fault or you joined a package that has a high contention ratio (lots of users). If your speed dropped for no reason you can control to the point of been unusable, as above you need to jump the hoops to cancel early.
And if it is a line fault, moving to a different ISP is unlikely to resolve it, the line needs to be repaired.
On the other hand if it is your ISP such as there servers further away from the house are at fault then changing would help. Best advice is ask neighbours if they have internet problems.

I_am_not_a_sheep

Tiscali/talktalk have a large number of LLU as well, and or it is Openreach resold, however even if it is openreach resold, once it has hit the DSLAMS it is then on to one of the Tiscali/talktalk centrals, of which they have many. The centrals at that time worked in a round robin style, so if for example you have 3 centrals, you could end up with 2 chokka, and people still being dumped and unable to connect, when the 3rd has little to no traffic on it, until it all evens its self out. Round robin is beginning to change now though because of 21CN coming in to play which essentially is BT's new all singing all dancing network they haven’t got a clue what they are going to use it for!

So Residential ISP's such as Tiscali/talktalk etc, and more especially the larger one, tended to be at the top of the list when it came to "traffic shaping" the centrals, or to put it in to plain English, if they had a central they could put 10 people on all running a max of 8Mb all the time... they were putting 100+ on. It is the way the internet works, and how the ISP provide the service they do.

So take a look at the contract is my best advice. they will try to tell you that "traffic shaping" or "fair usage" is in the contract, but they need to qualify what fair usage is in their eyes, and how they manage it. Also ask them for your real-time bandwidth usage over that period of time..... if they don’t have it, then how can they support or not support their request for payment based on the contract terms.

MrsTinks

Easy - the OP didn't allow them to rectify any fault IF there was one.
LLU is not Openreach resold - DS is to a degree and IPstream is completely. I was trying not to enter a totally technical explanation of how DS works - just trying to point out that there COULD infact be a technical reason for the failure. Unfortunately the OP has moved so we'll never know what the cause was to base any complaint case on. As the line is no longer with Tiscali/TT then how can any fault be diagnosed. The argument will be that it was the end user who chose to terminate service and not allow the ISP to complete diagnostics...

I am guessing though that you work or worked for an ISP sheep?